


Southern Wolves

by TacitWhisky



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 18:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TacitWhisky/pseuds/TacitWhisky
Summary: For a moment it is on the tip of Jon’s tongue to share with Robb the secret the man he’d thought all his life was his father had sworn him to keep as he left to join the Night’s Watch. But when Jon opens his mouth he finds his throat aching and empty. There is a tear somewhere deep in him, a frayed edge that if he tells Robb they are not brothers will rip him in two like old rotted cloth. And so though it makes his heart ache to know it a lie, he says softly, “they're my sisters too, Robb.”TLDR: Jon leaves the Wall to save Sansa from Joffrey. Together they wander the war ravaged Riverlands to try and return home.





	1. Chapter 1

The plan is born between the two of them in the dark of Robb’s tent late in the night once the lamps have begun to gutter and the wine in their cups has sloshed low, the spiced warmth and boldness within faded to a dull edge.

“I can't ask this of you,” Robb says for the fifth time in so many hours.

And for the fifth time in so many hours Jon answers, “it’s my plan, Robb.”

“I’ll send men with you.”

“Should I also wear the Stark colors?”

“You cannot do it alone, Jon.”

“More than one man will be noticed.”

“I should be the one going.”

“You’re the king.”

“And what king sends his brother to fight his battles?”

 _But I’m not your brother._ For a moment it is on the tip of Jon’s tongue to share with Robb the secret the man he’d thought all his life was his father had sworn him to keep as he left to join the Night’s Watch. To let spill all the anger and bitterness that have filled him for months now. To spill the secret that had gnawed away at him until he could stay at the Wall no longer.

But when Jon opens his mouth he finds his throat aching and empty. There is a tear somewhere deep in him, a frayed edge that if he tells Robb they are not brothers will rip him in two like old rotted cloth. And so though it makes his heart ache to know it a lie, he says softly, “they're my sisters too, Robb.”

\---

Jon leaves in the morning, food and dagger and a dozen gold crowns rolled into a tight bundle as around Jon men stumble out from their tents and cooking fires are lit. The bundle he lashes to the back of a courser unlike the stiff footed nag he’d ridden down from the wall only a fortnight before. Jeor Mormont had not had to give him any horse at all, but had found him the nag nevertheless. _You’ve said no vows yet_ , the old bear had growled, _so you’re no oathbreaker_. _Tell lord Stark when you see him of our need. Tell him the true war is here beyond the Wall_.

Jon had sworn he would, but by the time he’d reached Moat Cailin the man Jon had thought his father all his life was gone, head taken from his shoulders by the mad boy king. _He was never your father,_ a dull voice in him had hissed as tears pricked his eyes _, what right do you have to mourn him? You’ve only ever been some mad Targaryen’s dragonspawn._

But mourn him Jon had as he followed the kingsroad south. It was why Robb’s eyes had lit up when Jon first ducked under the flap of his tent, why he’d strode forward and clasped him tight, why the Lannister letter the day before offering a trade of Arya and Sansa for the Kingslayer had lead to hours of heated words. It’s why Jon finds himself tightening the straps of the saddlebag on the grey courser in the cool Riverland air with the sun still only half risen.

Last, Jon kneels to scratch Ghost behind the ears. The direwolf accepts his touch silently, red eyes seeming to understand as Jon whispers for him to keep Robb safe. Only when Jon glances up does he see Catelyn standing with her hands tucked into the sleeves of her dress, hair braided into a red rope over one shoulder, cool blue eyes watching him.

Jon straightens warily. “Lady Catelyn.”

A breeze plays with the hem of her dress, but Catelyn might be made of stone for all she moves. Her eyes study him dispassionate as though she were judging a recently scrubbed wall. “Robb told me what you mean to do,” she says eventually. “That you mean to bring my daughters back.”

“I do.” Jon gathers the reins of his courser. He swallows down the dryness in his throat. All his life he’s spent hiding from Catelyn’s cool gazes, slinking away whenever they settled on him, and it is all he can do not to flinch now. “If I can.”

“They’ll be well guarded.”

“I know.”

“You have to free them as one. Losing one will only make the Lannisters tighten their grasp on the other.”

“I’ll remember it.”

Catelyn nods as if to herself. Her lips purse as though around a strange taste, as though she doesn’t know how to form the words she wants. For a long moment Jon is at a loss, unsure what more lady Catelyn could have to say to him, what could hold her tongue. And then he realizes, understands suddenly the words she cannot bring herself to say, not to him, not to the bastard that’s always stained her marriage. _Thank you._

And just as suddenly Jon doesn’t want her thanks, the acceptance he’s craved all his life like some kind of kicked dog. _They’re my sisters,_ he wishes he could shout at her. But they aren’t, aren’t and never have been no matter how it feels like driving a knife into his chest to know that. _You never knew lord Stark’s great secret but you didn’t need to. I’ve never been a Stark to you._ It is all Jon can do to choke down a bitter laugh. _Ned never dishonored you. All these years you’ve hated me, and for what? For nothing. And now I’m the only hope your daughters have._

Robb emerges from his tent. Catelyn turns to meet him, and whatever she might have said to Jon dies unspoken on her lips. She lays a hand on Robb’s arm, murmurs something that Robb nods to, and takes her leave, dress swirling behind her. Robb stands watching as Jon pulls himself onto the courser and takes the reins in hand. “You don’t have to do this,” he says finally.

“I do,” Jon answers, and he wills his voice sure, surer than he feels, surer than the knot of fear in his stomach that he’ll fail, that it’ll be his head on a pike beside the man he’d thought was his father’s. _They’re my sisters too,_ he nearly says. But he will not lie to Robb again. Instead he gives him a tight smile. “I’ll bring them back.”

Robb’s jaw clenches but he unbuckles his belt and the sword hanging from it. He holds them up to Jon, and Jon circles the belt around his waist, the weight of the sword comforting as it slaps his leg. They clasp hands, and then there is nothing more to be said. Jon turns the courser from Robb and towards the edge of camp and snaps the reins. _I will never be a Stark, but I can still do the duty of one._

\---

A fortnight Jon is on the kingsroad, following its twists and bends through a land ravaged by Gregor Clegane’s tender ministrations. He passes holdfasts gutted and left smoking ruins, ash fields put to the torch, abandoned towns whose inhabitants have long fled or been put to the sword. It fills Jon with a rage that makes him wish he could turn the courser back to Robb and an enemy that could be fought and cut and defeated on the field. But he doesn’t.

And too he doesn’t let himself think of Arya and Sansa as he rides, the sisters he can no longer call his. He can still picture the last time he’d seen Arya, the way her face had pinched as she watched him set out north along the kingsroad up to the Wall. Arya Underfoot the servants called her, never able to sit still, always running through Winterfell, and the thought of her prisoner in the Red Keep, trapped small and alone in a room that was no better than a cell, fills him with a sick ache. And Sansa… more ward than brother she’d always treated him, but the same sick fills him when he thinks of her defenseless against Joffrey.

\---

He reaches King’s Landing late in the day, just as the sun has begun to fall. Even so he rides along the streets until he sits before the gate of the Red Keep itself, crimson washed walls rising in high towers above him. In the fading light he studies the shape of them, trying in vain to guess which Arya and Sansa are kept in. Huge the keep is, easily a match for Winterfell and able to engulf countless lesser castles within its walls. A slow kind of despair wells in Jon’s chest as he gazes up at it, but he forces it savagely back down. _You knew this was what you’d face. Find a way inside. Find Arya. Find Sansa. And then find a way out_.

\---

The way comes only a few scarce days later.

Jon watches from beneath the eave of a house as the gold cloaks of the city watch form up before outside the gate of the Red Keep. In the handful of days since he’s arrived he’s quickly grasped the mood throughout Kingslanding, the churning ocean of hunger and bitter anger against the Imp and all the Lannisters. The guardsmen must grasp it to, for not one looks keen to be escorting the royal party.

Jon tugs down the hood of his cloak as the gate of the Red Keep swings open and in a cloak embroidered with the crowned Baratheon stag in gold thread Joffrey leads the way, face twisted in the same proud shit-eating expression Jon remembers from months before. Behind him rides the massive figure of the Hound with his snarling helm and a trio of the kingsguard in their flowing white cloaks. Tyrion follows with his swollen brow and mismatched eyes and behind him…

Jon’s heart jumps into his throat. Even without being able to see her face Sansa’s red hair, so like her lady mother’s, is unmistakable. She looks thinner than the last time he saw her, cheekbones gaunt, eyes sunken, but still just as achingly lovely as the day she’d left Winterfell.

Jon’s scans the riders behind Sansa, but of Arya there is no sign. _She must have been left in the keep_. It almost makes him grin. _She always was untameable even for septa Mordane_.

The gold cloaks close around the king’s party as it passes through the Red Keep’s iron gate, and Jon shadows them as they begin down the tight streets of Kingslanding, slinking through the crowd of unwashed and sullen faces watching the procession from windows and doorways. An old man spits at the ground, another mutters under his breath about bread, but Jon barely notes them. All his attention is on Sansa where she rides beside the Imp on a chestnut courser. Silently Jon curses Tyrion and every kind thought he’d ever had for the little man. _Wait and watch,_ he tells himself, a bitter taste in his mouth. _You can’t do anything now. Not without Arya._

A half hour brings them to the docks, and then it is an hour of standing in the midday sun as prince Tommen weeps, princess Myrcella kneels to accept the high septon’s blessing, and Joffrey wrinkles his nose at all. Sansa stands beside him, hands held demurely before her, ocean breeze playing with the strays of her red hair. An uneasy feeling settles in Jon’s stomach as the minutes tick by, an unwanted thought gnawing away at him under the sun until he has no choice but to face it: what if she loves Joffrey? Last Jon saw her she’d been in his company as they made to leave Winterfell, laughing at some jest he’d made, cheeks pink and pleased. For all that he’d once thought her his sister Sansa has always been a distant figure, one glimpsed sewing with Jeyne and septa Mordane and the other ladies of Winterfell, a slip of a girl in slim dresses who loved songs of knights gallant and maidens fair. Was it so strange to think she would prefer her golden prince to the cold north?

 _He took father’s head,_ Jon reminds himself harshly. _She can’t love him after that. She can’t._

Still the thought nags as the lines of Myrcella’s ship are cast off, Joffrey and the others mount their horses, and the gold cloaks shove back the crowd. A few in the crowd call out to the king’s good health, but most are silent and sullen, and the back of Jon’s neck prickles at the sea of bitter and unwashed faces around him.

The king’s party make it halfway up Aegon’s High Hill when a shout comes the front of the procession and the whole thing churns to a halt. Off to the side Jon cannot see it, but the shout is follow a moment later by a scream, and then rage is ripping through the crowd, bodies surging against the line of gold cloaks like water sloshed in a bowl. Jon is near enough to the back of the crowd to avoid the crush of bodies, but even still he must shove a man back as he slips to the nearest house, heart hammering in his chest as he pulls himself up by one of the struts to scan the crowd below.

All before Jon is chaos, bodies churning and surging against the thin line of gold cloaks, shouts of bread and brotherfucker filling the air. A rock whizzes inches from Jon’s head as a woman lobs it at where the king’s column is scattering, ripping apart as half surge forward and the other half are caught in the grasp of the crowd. Jon glimpses the Hound standing head and shoulders above the surging mass of bodies, watches as he roars and strikes the man before him, teeth spraying the air.

And, finally, Jon finds what he’s looking for.

A few feet from the Hound Sansa huddles on her chestnut courser, the sleeve of her silk dress ripped, face glazed and stunned. Jon looks only long enough to mark her before plunging into the crowd, shoving and pushing his way until he’s almost beside her. A ring of men circle her, shouting and reaching out to try and grab the horse’s reins as it rears its head back.

 _Arya._ Jon pauses, and for that pause he hates himself. Sansa’s horse rears, the crowd around her drawing back, and Jon clenches his jaw hard enough for his teeth to ache and darts into the opening. Sansa’s foot has slipped out of the stirrup and he shoves his foot into it and hauls himself into the saddle in front of her. He grabs her hand and wraps her arm around his waist before kicking his heels into the courser, spurring it forward through the sea of raging bodies around them.

Hands grasp at them, and Jon rips his sword from its scabbard. He slams the pommel into the cheek of a woman clawing at his leg and slashes at a man grabbing the reins of the courser. Blood sprays the air as the man falls back, the rest of the crowd before them scattering as the courser plunges forward, and then they are past the worst of it. A stone whistles past Jon’s head. Unwilling to let go of Sansa’s hand around his waist he grabs the courser’s reins with the hand still gripping his sword, and does the best he can to yank them in the direction of a narrow side alley.

The roar of the crowd follows them into the alley, but none of the crowd itself does. Jon doesn’t try and guide the courser, just lets it have its head down a flurry of roads and alleys, Sansa’s hand crushed in his. Dirty faced men and women spit curses and a few fling dung at them as they ride pass, but the naked steel in his hand keeps them from doing more.

They reach an abandoned stretch of cramped street and Jon shoves his sword back in its scabbard and reins the courser to a stop. He jumps down from the horse, but Sansa flinches away as he pulls her down after him. “Where are you taking me?” She shrinks back, shaking her head, blood trickling from a gash in her scalp, voice babbling. “Oh please let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I promise I won’t.”

“Sansa, stop,” Jon shoves his hood back, half ripping it as he does. He pushes her to arm’s length, thrusts his face in hers. “It’s me.”

Her eyes widen and she stops struggling. “Jon,” she breathes, “ _Jon_.”

He nods, droplets of sweat flicking from his slicked hair. “Where are they keeping Arya?”

Sansa’s eyes focus and she fists the sleeves of his tunic with more strength than he thought possible in her slender fingers. “They don’t have Arya. She disappeared when they took father, and they haven’t found her.”

Jon curses under his breath. Where in the city would he have gone if he were her? He looks back and forth down the alley, cursing the futility of it, cursing the old gods and new, cursing Joffrey and Cersei and Tywin and every Lannister back to Lann the Clever himself. _I won’t leave you_. But they cannot stay. That much Jon knows. Sansa is too valuable for the Lannisters to do anything less than scour the city for her, turn over every brown bowl and pisspot in Flea Bottom.

“Fire!” Someone shouts in the distance, and Jon looks up to see a plume of grey smoke muddying the sky. He clenches his teeth hard enough for them to ache, but still stays rooted to the spot, unable to stay and unwilling to move.

It is Sansa who decides for him. She grabs his hand, tugs him back to the horse. “We have to go. You don’t know Joffrey. He’ll search everywhere for me, and if he finds you he’ll take your head like he did father’s.”

 _I’ll find you, Arya_ , Jon swears silently as he heaves himself into the saddle and helps Sansa up behind him, but he hates how weak the words echo even in his own mind as he kicks in his heels to start the courser down the street, smoke beginning to choke the sky above them.


	2. Chapter 2

 

All day they ride, a swift trot interspersed with walking to keep their horse from collapsing, but even so by twilight the courser is exhausted. Jon jumps to the ground, trying not to stagger despite his sore legs. Smoke hangs over the faraway hill of Kingslanding, great billows of orange and red catching the light of the raging flame below. From so far away it seems almost beautiful. A bitter taste fills Jon’s mouth as he looks. _A sight only a Targaryen could love._

“Jon?” Sansa says from atop the courser. She draws tighter around her the cloak he gave her to hide the silk of her dress, and glances up and down the road. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Jon gathers the courser’s reins in hand and leads them off the kingsroad. He forces himself not to look back. _I’ll come back for you, Arya. I promise I will._

Night has already begun to fall, shadows seeping out from the trees, before Jon draws them to a halt in a glade. A small creek gurgles at the edge of it, and after Sansa has slid down Jon leads the courser to the water. He pats its flank and murmurs encouragement as it dips its head to drink. By the time he’s finished unsaddling it and tying its reins to a nearby branch and turns back the sun is all but gone. Sansa stands at the edge of the glade, hands clasping and reclasping before her, shoulders hunched as she gazes at the woods around them like a doe about to startle.

Jon pauses, at a loss as to what to do or say. He casts his mind back, tries to think what he would say if she was Arya, but all his life Jon has been painfully aware that Sansa is not Arya. Winterfell was a large castle and their days spent preparing for the roles they would one day have. Despite spending nearly every waking moment beside Robb and Theon, Jon might go a week without seeing Arya and Sansa outside of the occasional meal if it weren't for Arya seeking him out on her own.

But where Arya had sought him out, Sansa never had: her life sewing and songs and gossiping with Jeyne or little Beth Cassel, a distant and sweet summer girl whose hair shone copper in the sun. _Our half brother,_ she’d called him since she was young enough to understand what he was. And since his earliest memory Jon had known what that meant, known that a bastard brother was not the same as a trueborn one.

_She knew,_ a voice in Jon hisses and he looks down, shame sharp as bile rising in his throat. _Just like her lady mother she knew you were no Stark even without the secret of your Targaryen blood._ _Did she ever see you like Robb or Bran or Rickon? Or were you the same as Theon, a boy raised beside Robb but not a brother, never a brother?_

Jon pushes back the thought and kneels. He digs through the saddlebag and pulls out a hunk of bread and cheese he offers up to Sansa. He half expects the girl who loved lemon cakes so much to wrinkle her nose at it, but she accepts it silently and folds her legs under her. “Do you think they’ll think me dead?” She asks as she nibbles at the bread.

“They should. We’ll take care though, and I won’t light a fire.” He takes a seat on the ground opposite Sansa, keenly aware of how strange it is to sit here with this girl he once thought his sister. Even in a soiled cloak and after a day of riding she sits graceful as a lady, spine a gentle arch, and Jon has never felt more awkward or dirt stained. He pulls a water skin from the saddlebag and leans forward to offer her it, tries to smile like he would with Arya. “We’ll have to find you something else to wear.”

The words are awkward, clumsy, but all Sansa does is blink and look down at the silk and samite fit snug to her hips and waist. “I’ll be glad to be rid of it.” She says, and Jon is taken aback by the sudden heat in her voice. “Joffrey gave me it.”

There is a deep loathing in Sansa’s voice that Jon cannot remember ever hearing before, a loathing he’d never thought the distant and slender and sweet smiling sister he once thought his capable of. _What happened in Kingslanding?_ An uneasy feeling fills Jon’s gut as he studies her, the way she keeps peering around the glade as though expecting Lannister men to burst from the trees at any moment.

“You’re out of his reach now,” he says firmly and meets her eyes when she glances up, gives her a steady smile and offers her the water skin again. “And you don’t ever have to go back.”

Sansa accepts the water skin, but doesn’t bring it to her lips, only stares down at it. “I was there when it happened,” she says in a subdued voice. “When they took father’s head. And after Joffrey made me look at father’s head- he wanted me to- but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.” Her gaze snaps upward, eyes flashing. “I hate him, Jon. I do. I hate him more than anything in this world. He’s vile and cruel and I hope he chokes and dies. I don’t know how I ever thought him handsome.”

_A little shit,_ he’d told Arya Joffrey was what seems a lifetime ago, but even he would never think of him capable of something like that. A sick feeling fills Jon’s gut and he leans forward, touches Sansa’s arm. “Robb will make him pay. For father. For everything he’s done.”

Sansa blinks and looks down at his hand on her arm. She bites her lip. “I thought you had gone to the Wall.”

“I had. But when I heard Robb was mustering the northern lords and that father...” _You were never his son, only ever some mad Targaryen’s dragonspawn. What right do you have to grieve him?_ Jon swallows. “I couldn’t stay.”

“I’m glad. I didn’t think I’d ever leave that awful place.” Sansa gives him a wan smile and finally takes a sip from the water skin. “Where will we go now?”

“Riverrun.” A pang fills Jon’s chest, but he shoves it down. He does not know how to find Arya, where to even start looking. “Robb and your lady mother are waiting there.”

Sansa nods and hands him back the water skin. They finish the bread in silence, crickets chirping in the distance and a pair of magpies squawking at each other loudly overhead. Jon stows the water skin back in the saddlebag and lies back on the prickly grass as a few feet away Sasna curls into a ball under his ragged cloak. Despite the throb of his muscles from a day of riding, sleep escapes Jon as he listens to the rustle of the leaves in the wind and stares up at the silver net of the stars in the black sky.

Though not the numb cold that seeped off the Wall and suffused muscle and bone and never left, it is still sharply chill without a cloak or blanket and Jon tucks his hands into his armpits to resist shivering. He finds without bidding his mind wandering to the Wall, to the black brothers he abandoned; he’d made Grenn and Pyp swear to protect Sam from Alliser Thorne before he left, but he knows in the pit of his gut he abandoned Sam. _I had to._ Jon tries to tell himself, but the words are thin consolation. _Robb needed me. Arya needed me. And Sansa… Sansa..._

“Jon?”

Jon turns his head. Sansa opens the cloak, pale bare arms pimpling in the cold as she does. “If you want,” she starts uncertainly, “we could share.”

Jon blinks. “I smell like horse,” he tells her bluntly, “horse and sweat.”

Sansa purses her lips, just as she used to when scolding Arya, the expression wiping the uncertainty from her face. “Don’t be silly. So do I.”

_That I doubt._ But it is cold, and so Jon rises from the grass, carefully takes a seat beside Sansa, her shoulder warm against his as he takes the edge of the blanket from her and wraps it around them. Just as he thought, though a day of riding has stripped much of it away, the faint scent of her perfume still clings to Sansa, something sweet and light and flowery. Had she always smelled this way? Idly, Jon realizes that he cannot remember a time when they’d ever touched or been so close even as children. There’d always been a space between the two of them, an empty thing that yawned wider with every passing year that Sansa grew into the highborn lady she was born to be and he stayed the bastard of Winterfell.

Sansa shifts beside him, her warm shoulder pressing against his. “I know I’m not-” she starts before her voice hitches. She swallows. “I’m sorry I’m not, Arya,” she says in a small voice. “I know you came for her.”

Jon shakes his head sharply. “I came for both of you,” he says, and tries to shove down the shame pooling in his gut. Had he, truly? _If Arya were safe would you have been so quick to break your vows?_

Sansa doesn’t answer at once, the only sound in the glade the rustle of the leaves and far off rasp of crickets. Her hair tickles his jaw she lays her head on his shoulder. “Thank you, Jon,” she says softly. “Thank you for coming for me.” 

Jon nods, throat raw and aching. _You’re my sister too,_ he wishes he could say, but he knows it a lie. _She never was,_ a voice in him hisses, _not then and not now. You were only ever some mad Targaryen’s dragonspawn hidden like a snake in the grass._

Sansa doesn’t move her head, and as the minutes pass her breathing evens and softens in sleep. Carefully, Jon lets his own head fall back to rest against the tree at their back, closes his eyes and lets the day’s exhaustion drag him into sleep beside her.


End file.
